


Let me at least hate you in peace

by wh4t4sh4me



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Crack, F/M, FINALLY posting something in this fandom?, ME - Freeform, Season 3, Trauma, a LOT of grief, but you knew that already, chrisjen is as tough as beef jerky, could it be?, its more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29367045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wh4t4sh4me/pseuds/wh4t4sh4me
Summary: As the events on Ilus begin to spiral, Chrisjen faces her own challenges on earth. Dissatisfied with the situation and the development of her canditature she finds herself wishing for advice from an old acquaintance. -Which is not easy, if that acquaintance is a convicted criminal and tried to murder you.
Relationships: Arjun/Chrisjen Avasarala, Chrisjen Avasarala & Sadavir Errinwright, Chrisjen Avasarala/Sadavir Errinwright
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Let me at least hate you in peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goreds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreds/gifts).



The first time the thought wanders into her head is when Gao hands in her resignation.

Lt. Lipton left, lately always the harbinger of more disaster on Ilus, now exchanging his position in front of her desk with Chrisjen‘s Home Secretary, carrying a single sheet of paper.

The Secretary-General suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. She knows what’s coming.

And it happens. However, - thank god- it’s a short declaration of war.

“I look forward to having this debate in public.” the young woman says and Chrisjen feels her lip twitching.

“So do I.”

Gao leaves.

Chrisjen does not look forward to having this debate in public. Nancy Gao spurs on her competitive streak like little else has done in the last years but inwardly she knows, that the public won’t be on her side. Not with the vast riches the ring worlds promise.

She also knows that she doesn’t have the head for this now. Ilum is more important. The ring and everything out there happening is _more important_ than her trying to defend her seat with a metaphorical broom, for god’s sake.

And she never was a great public debater. Either people could see her point of view and change their position accordingly or the whole thing just became a waste of time and she needed to find a way around them in the worst case.

She lifts the polite and formal resignation letter up from her desk with her thumb and index finger and eyes it like a personal affront.

_Sadavir would have mopped the floor with you._

Chrisjen frowns. She lets the paper disappear in one of her drawers and shuts it, carefully pondering why and how that thought has appeared in her mind and _why_ it brings her so much glee?

She sighs, rubbing her eyes hard.

There had always been something enormously satisfying about watching her old mentee outpace and trip his political opponents, she can’t lie.

Until she had been the one in his crosshair.

Stars dance before her irises as she takes her fingers away.

In the corner of her view, she can almost see a tall, dark-clad figure stand at the small side table which holds her whiskey stash, pouring himself a drink.

Like some kind of predatory penguin.

“ _Do you think she’s as idealistic as she believes herself to be?”_ the figure ponders and she can hear the smirk in his voice.

“Oh, shut your mouth.” Chrisjen says to her empty office with a vigour that surprises herself. “I don’t indulge _reptiles_.”

-

_This is getting fucking ridiculous._

The structures on Ilus have started to shoot out lighting for no apparent reason and there is nothing but radio silence from Holden and his crew. If it was possible to attach a literal kick to the backside (preferably with a magboot) to a tightbeam message, Chrisjen would have done so with the last three she send him.

Walking down the hallway, sided by her aides, she finds herself thinking what a certain dishonoured under-secretary would think about the whole affair. Does he even now? Has he got access to media or do his wardens keep him in the dark about everything that is going on?

Which would kill the man in the long run, she is sure.

He always hated not being in the loop. The thought fills her with grim satisfaction.

She tries to internalize some of his past aloofness during the interview about Nancy Gao’s past and it works surprisingly well.

Not that she would ever thank the bastard for that.

-

_Caring family matriarch._

_Play the game._

The advisors and Arjun’s voice still echo in her head.

For the first time in long years, she finds that Arjun is surprisingly unhelpful.

She’s always been good at games; such that don’t involve smiling and burbling about topics which are far, far down on the list of things vital to planet earth, at least.

_Has everybody just gone crazy? Am I going crazy?_

Chrisjen reflects often during her meetings with the campaign manager how this is the exact reason she _never_ ran for office.

_You are in the position of running the government on this planet now. And now you answer to everybody. Congratulations, Chrisjen._

The voice in her head has sounded like a smug Sadavir Errinwright annoyingly often in the last week.

She remembers how he said something similar at a time that feels like millennia ago, surely in another live. She wishes for him to go to hell. The last thing she needs is a head-bug á la James Holden.

He surely can’t be the embodiment of some voice of reason but still she finds herself agreeing with that part of herself alarmingly often.

She feels like he’d understand. - God help her.

She senses his shadow next to her again, walking through the UN-building, wishing for someone to unload her frustration upon and it’s almost comforting.

_God help your enemies, Chrisjen._

“Yes, god help them.” she growls.

Arriving at the door of her office, a whim forms into a thought. Which, to her credit, almost never happens.

She wants to talk to the ghost in the back of her head. A terrible idea, surely.

-

And a lot of things happen before she actually does.

-

During the townhall debate, she can picture him again: half hidden behind a potted plant with an unreadable face, next to Arjun and her campaign manager.

Gao does everything in her power to appear as the beacon of hope she wishes to symbolize; standing for change and new opportunities. And she is good but Chrisjen shoots back with everything she has.

It is becoming exactly the class struggle she imagined this would be; she is the bourgeois woman that had the power put into her cradle and Nancy Gao presents herself as the voice of the people.

But if Gao thinks, she could flip the Eros incident to fit her narrative of pro-colonization she is wildly mistaken. That was Chrisjen's triumph and she makes that clear.

“...You ask how I would protect Earth from another Eros-incident? That is a good question. And here is my answer: The same way I did last time.” she finishes, feeling deeply satisfied with the way that came out.

The campaign manager is evidently not of the same opinion.

Sadavir's shadow has disappeared; faded as she made a mention of him. Or rather of how she had brought him down and Chrisjen honestly doesn't know if she feels relief at that or irritation.

After that, the discussion derails and as Gao has Georg Cantor stand up while systematically pointing out the flaws in the lottery system, Chrisjen knows that she has been outplayed for once.

Then her chief of security drags her out of the debate and a little while later, the _Soujourner_ gets blasted out of the orbit by six nuclear missiles, - without her intelligence being able to confirm with certainty that the ship was a threat.

Her opponent pounces on this new ammunition like a vulture.

A bad fucking day, all in all.

The Scotch Arjun poured her earlier, has appeared in her hand just to… take the edge off but it actually just managed to sharpen that edge. Put her in a mood.

The afterimage of Sadavir stands by the window, - which would be impossible for a real person as they are just about to land – voicing her insecurities.

_Christ, you really have no idea how to appeal to anybody. How a bout you make a point in a debate, for once, without stepping on everyone's toes?_

“Can you shut up, for once?” she murmurs quietly but ardently.

The admiral on her screen has stopped talking and looks at her quite flabbergasted. He has been in her cabinet for some time but that is a new one, even for her. “Madam, I thought you wanted to be briefed about the newest pirate activity in the ring area?”

She curses inwardly, telling him some believable excuse of something happening on her side of the call he did not witness.

He continues. She thinks of the once lanky young man that barely managed to hide his excitement as he walked for the first time under the glass dome of the general assembly.

-

 _Maybe_ , Chrisjen thinks as he appears on screen _...this was a huge, fucking mistake._

The trial had been very well documented – having been an event of great public interest.

She sits on the floor in front of her couch in her white housecoat, barefoot after showering and the glass of Scotch hasn't really left her hand since stepping off the UN One.

On the high-resolution screen in front of her, Errinwright's charges are read to the court room. The auditorium is empty. The security concerns had been too high; the queue of people having a bone to pick with the dishonoured Undersecretary was easily long enough to reach around the globe.

She did not attend. She had handed in her statement in written form. - A contentious approach and the court had disapproved, but the sheer amount of evidence against him, including that _fucking_ video message had been more than enough to lock him up for two lifetimes. He had been more than lucky to avoid the death sentence.

At the time, she told herself that he just wasn't important enough to deserve any more of her attention while she was trying to clean up his messes. Chrisjen is slow with admitting to herself, that maybe that reasoning was in need of some re-evaluation.

Errinwright rises after the prosecutor sits down again. She squints at the bright screen, finding that he looks nervous. Nervous but defiant. Or maybe just stubborn. And his suit doesn't really seem to fit as if the man wearing it suddenly had aged by a decade and shrunk into it.

She takes another sip of her drink as he leans forward to the microphone.

“ _...My lawyer will read out my statement in my stead.”_

Errinwright's voice is tired, almost listless but it’s his voice. For a moment, it transports her back to the luxurious interior of the _Guanshiyin_ and his face, distorted in hypocritical rage on the big screens of the space yacht.

_Get the fuck back to work._

Maybe she is not quiet over the whole thing. - It's a calm assertion from the back of her mind as it observes the mess playing out in the front. Maybe this was a really shitty idea; in general, but especially on top of today's events. Because this is not the triumphant moment she pictured if she was to ever see him again. Most of all, it is not devoid of feelings.

Her hand searches for the bottle on the desk beside her.

She is not the focused woman, returning from space alive and triumphant she was shortly after everything went down.

_Adrenaline can go a long way, I suppose._

“Chrisjen?”

Arjun's voice from the dark behind her makes her jerk up. Quickly, as if she had been caught doing something forbidden, she grabs the remote and stops the video. Errinwrights freezes on the screen as he leans forward in his chair, his fidgeting hands stop, his eyes remain closed and the monotone voice of his lawyer is cut short.

“Darling!”, she says as her husband walks over to her slowly. His eyes turn to the TV and the flickering image it displays. Chrisjen half gets up and smoothes her hair back, entirely unsure why she is feeling so embarrassed. “I was about to head into bed... Where have you been?”

“The campaign manager crunched a few numbers for us.” Arjun leans forward, smiles and kisses her on the cheek. “But that can absolutely wait until tomorrow.” His eyes return to the screen and she follows his gaze.

“...Do you think he was punished fairly?” He says after a few seconds, his face neutral, tone neutral. Chrisjen hesitates for a few seconds and studies his expression from the side. She knows why she loves this calm and gentle man, but once in a while, it hits her like a train wreck. Of course, the alcohol is a good catalyst.

“I don't think that there is really a fair punishment for what he did.” She regards her empty glass, picking her next words carefully. “But I guess... That I'm not entirely unbiased on the topic.”

Arjun sits down heavily next to her spot and opens his arms as an invitation for her to join him. She gets to his side, cuddling up to his shoulder because if she can't show affection to him while they sit on the floor of their living room, when can she?

She hands him the glass and he refills it, before drinking himself. “You know...” he says quietly. “I'm used to worrying about you as well as that I know that you will never cease to surprise me.”

She snorts, pushing playfully into his shoulder.

“But did it occur to you, that you never spoke of him again? Not once?”

Chrisjen keeps silent. There is an actual lump forming in her throat which is just, frankly speaking, unfair. He is right. Since becoming Sec-Gen, she tried to will Sadavir out of existence and nobody had questioned it.

“He hurt me quiet badly, you know?” she says eventually, withstanding her impulse to flee out of the situation; flee from what makes her feel vulnerable and weak.

Arjun's eyes are dark and worried.

“Well, you've paved each others ways for twenty-five years. There is no way to get over something like this easily...” He gestures to the TV. “Why are you confronting yourself with this now of all times?”

“Because I...” She stops.

_Because I miss the damn bastard. Can you imagine?  
_

There is no logical reason she could tell Arjun. He had always watched Sadavir from a distance and Chrisjen was quiet sure, even though he would never say it, he had never grown fond of the other man. Perhaps he had seen a rival, perhaps something she had managed to ignore over all the years. Perhaps both.

What she knew is that her husband did not deserve to deal with this antic of hers while he was already keeping her campaign together.

“Because I still think I should have known better.” She absolutely hates the way her voice wavers, threatening to break at those words.

Arjun pulls her closer as she reaches for the remote and lets the video resume.

She places her head on his shoulder while Errinwright faces the consequences of his action on the screen. Arjun's thumb rubbing circles into her side as well as the hellfire the prosecutor rains down on Sadavir's head are strangely cathartic.

Unseen by her husband, she allows herself for the first time to let a few tears roll down her cheeks for her former friend.


End file.
